LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Mayor Linda Gorton alongside other city leaders acknowledged that Lexington's winter weather response fell short, and she says the city is taking steps to make sure it doesn't happen again.
A formal after action review of the city's winter weather response gathered input from more than 100 drivers, supervisors and senior leaders, uncovering six specific failures: an inability to distinguish between snow and ice conditions, staffing shortages, equipment downtime, communication breakdowns, training gaps and no clear chain of command.
"It's not necessarily easy to hear the results of an after action plan," Gorton said. "But what this does, is it tells us what we need to do better."
On Tuesday, Gorton will ask the Urban County Council to approve agreements with eight private contractors to supplement city crews. Acting commissioner of Environmental Quality and Public Works Charlie Martin said the contractors are a critical piece of the plan.
"We're going to be developing performance metrics that tell us whether we can cover these 44 routes in a way that is efficient and effective at the same time," Martin said. "When they're not, having eight contractors in our hip pocket will help a lot."
But Martin said contractors alone won't fix the problem.
"What I found is that the contractors lacked clear direction as well," Martin said. "Taking this list of aid and coming up with standard operating procedure for them — including how they mobilize, how long they stay mobilized, how they become part of the team and are another arm of urban county government — that is what I think was missing last year as much as anything else."
Martin also identified communication as a critical gap in the city's current plan.
"It seems like the plan we had, it's great reading and stuff like that, but it's not an action plan," Martin said. "There needs to be an action plan that can be adjusted accordingly so everyone knows what's gonna happen."
Gorton said she will appoint a work group — including City Council members and key staff — to begin implementing the review's recommendations. She also said her upcoming fiscal year 2026-27 budget proposal will include new resources dedicated to ice storm preparedness.
